The April 2024 print edition of Reader’s Digest Canada was its last. Founded in 1947, 25 years after the original U.S. publication, Reader’s Digest Canada brought a focus to Canadian stories and became a national treasure for more than 70 years. Its readers were incredibly loyal. So while the website will no longer be updated and newsletters no longer sent, we will leave you with some words from readers themselves that we ran in the final print edition. Thank you for being a part of this incredible journey.“I will be very sad to see the Canadian edition of Readers Digest discontinued. The summ ..read more

When nine-year olds Ella Grace Rossen and Cash Daniels met in July 2019, they immediately connected. It was at Ocean Heroes Bootcamp, in the bustling halls of the University of British Columbia, and when their moms introduced them, they had no idea that the kids were about to become an environmental-activism powerhouse duo.We knew we could make a difference together, says Cash from his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Ella, originally from Ajax, Ont., but now living in Vero Beach, Florida, agrees. It was pretty much instant best friends.Within a short time, their meeting transformed into action ..read more

At just seven years old, Angelina Tsuboi discovered her passion for innovation. It all began with a simple maze game she coded in her Los Angeles public schools Grade 2 class. I was enthralled by the entire experience, she says.Today, at 18, the Grade 12 student is not only a mobile and web developer proficient in more than 20 programming languages, but a pilot with a keen interest in aerospace cybersecurity. Her initial curiosity has evolved into a deep-seated desire to use technology to solve real-world problems. I think a lot of kids feel trapped because they dont know how their actions cou ..read more

Sia Godika was 13 when she noticed the barefoot children of construction workers at a building site near her house in the upscale Koramangala district of Bangalore, India.Their feet were bare. Cracked. Hard. Dirty. Bleeding, reflects Sia, now 17. They were just walking around that construction site like it was an everyday practice for them. And it was: In that moment, Sia realized the troubling contrast to her own privilege.I went back home, looked at my own feet and thought, Wow, Im 13 years old. My feet are so tender. These children are seven or eight. She describes opening her closet doors ..read more

One Saturday night in the spring of 2023, while most of her friends were vegging out, Elizabeth Chen, then 16, was studying in the basement of her familys suburban home. She was trying to crack the code on how patients with leukemia respond to CAR T-cell therapy, one of the newest and most promising treatments for blood cancers.Believe it or not, it was science-project work. But instead of growing crystals or turning a lemon into a battery, the Grade 11 Edmonton student was trying to find ways to make CAR T-cell therapy more effective. Unlike traditional cancer therapies, like radiation and ch ..read more

It turns out patience isnt always a virtue. By the time Nalin Kamat was 13, the Toronto teen was well on his way to becoming a working artist. He had already had his first show at a local arts hub, showcasing his series titled Dispositions, charcoal sketches of the human body as a metaphor for his own transformation during adolescence.Yet he wanted morespecifically to start showing his work in a juried exhibition, where a panel of art experts would evaluate and select pieces in a competitive review process. Thats when he hit an obstacle, discovering in the very last line of a multi-page applic ..read more

Cecily Eklund, 11, has always adored her baby dolls. When she was six, she needed them more than ever: She had to go through brain-cancer surgery and MRI scans, but she was told she couldnt take her favourite dolls with her into the magnetic machine because they had metal in them.So Cecily and her mom, Cathya home-schooler of seven kids and a professional doll maker in Westlock, Alta.got creative. Together, they made a special doll, using weighted glass and other MRI-safe materials, that could stay with Cecily during the long imaging appointments.Besides the materials it was made with, the dol ..read more

Dr. Carola Vinuesa was in her office at the John Curtain School of Medical Research in Canberra, Australia, one afternoon in August 2018 when she received a call that both changed her life and saved another. As a professor of immunology, Vinuesa immersed herself in the fascinating and complex world of genetics.The call was from David Wallace, a former student at John Curtain whom she hadnt spoken to in years. He presented Vinuesa with a scenario that was equal parts shocking, intriguing and devastating: An Australian woman named Kathleen Folbigg had been sentenced to decades in prison for murd ..read more

Dusk on the Nam Ou River in northern Laos.I recently read that a new high-speed train route had opened in Laos at the end of 2021. The Lao-China Railway can get you the 150 kilometres from the ancient capital of Luang Prabang north to the Chinese border in just 90 minutes. It carries more than 1.5 million passengers a year, a game-changer for a country with very little transportation infrastructure.As someone who has visited this remote corner of Laos, I wondered: What fun is that sort of speed when you can take three days to do pretty much the same trip by boatnever knowing if youll actually ..read more

After suffering a concussion in January 2023, Nicolle Weeks spent nearly a year fighting symptoms such as migraines, fatigue and dizziness. Initially, the 43-year-old didnt realize how severely she had hit her head.I was walking on the sidewalk, and I slipped on some black ice, fell backward and bounced my head off the ground, she says. She lay flat on her back with her arms out for a minute in shock.Satisfied she wasnt injured, she dusted herself off and hurried to meet a friend for brunch. While there, she felt far away and dazed when her friend was talking. But it went away, and she didnt t ..read more